Hartsville Today is back in service

Hartsville Today is up and running once again.

A catastrophic hardware failure caused the interactive citizen journalism Web site to crash Oct. 2. The crash wiped out all of the data that was on the site as well as the backup data. Repeated efforts to recover the data failed.

“It has a little different look. Some things will still be missing for a while,” said Doug Fisher of the University of South Carolina School of Journalism and Mass Communications. “We’ve still got some work to do on it, but we want people to know it’s back.”

Previously registered users of the site will have to re-register on the site, Fisher said. As of midday Thursday, 58 people had registered on the site, Fisher said.

About 1,900 members were registered on the site when it crashed, according to Fisher.

“I doubt we’ll get back to 1,900 anytime soon - after all, that took four years. But I hope people will find the site useful and take the time to register again,” Fisher said.

“We want people to register and let us know what they think,” he said.

The site’s address remains the same as before: http://www.hartsvilletoday.com or http://www.hvtd.com.

Those familiar with the previous version of the site will have to learn some new features and new ways of posting stories and pictures on the site, Fisher said.

“We’re all having to learn some new things,” he said.

Hartsville Today was just shy of its fourth anniversary when the crash occurred. That anniversary came Tuesday. The site went live on Oct. 27, 2005.

Hartsville Today was created through a partnership between USC’s College of Journalism and Mass Communications and The Messenger with funding from the J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism at American University in Washington, D.C., through a grant program called New Voices.

It was one of the first such projects funded by the J-Lab.

When the crash that brought down the previous site occurred, all of the data, including the backup, was on the same disc, according to Matthew Broughton, senior production coordinator for SCNow.com. Broughton and Shawn Vigneri, systems development manager for digital for Media General in Richmond, Va., worked to get the new site up and running.

Broughton said the drive failure that caused the crash appeared to be a “run of the mill hardware failure of undetermined origin.”

Fisher said he has been gratified by the response to the site’s return.

“I’m just glad it has the support from the community that it does,” he said.

Readers can post photos on the site but they cannot be linked to stories at present, Fisher said.

“That’s something Matt’s working on to make those two dance,” he said.

In the coming weeks, general improvements will continue to be made to the site, according to Fisher.

One key feature that is still missing is a community calendar. Fisher said getting some sort of calendar back on the site is a priority but will take some time and it will be different.

While some features are still not available and may not become available again, the site has added the ability to include links in stories simply by typing the address into the story, he said.

“I know people become used to certain features,” Fisher said. “I just hope they don’t become disappointed and leave the site. We want people to use it.”